The Yellow Wallpaper

"The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others." This quote in "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a good example of how descriptions of colors can set the mood for the whole story. If Gilman had just said that the room was yellow the reader could either take that to mean it was a bright, sunny, happy yellow. In this case, however, since Gilman uses words such as smouldering, sickley and dull, the reader understands how ugly this wallpaper is.